The constant bombing is depleting ammunition and straining the reserves of the two countries on the eve of a winter when artillery will be key
The arrival of winter in Ukraine, according to experts, will mean a paradigm shift in the war, allowing the artillery battle to prevail. With floors that will be frozen and muddy, where armor will struggle to move forward and troops will find it nearly impossible to open trenches with shovels, analysts are giving full attention to rocket launchers. And this makes the invasion a kind of close election: every shell counts. Because both Russia and the United States and some of their main allies – all major arms suppliers to Kiev – are close to the limit of their reserves and the two warring armies agree that the capacity to replenish them will be the factor that the course of the bell.
Only after the end of the war will the true dramatic dimensions be known: the actual number of dead, the total number of those displaced by mortar fire, and the true extent of the devastated landscape. But the predictions are frightening. Some calculations estimate that Russian and Ukrainian artillerymen fire 36,000 projectiles in a single day, most of them from the invading side. Hence the extensive destruction of buildings blown up by explosions, which literally wiped out cities like Liman or Mariupol, and the fact that Kherson is already being called the next “mother of all urban battles”, because since the siege of Kiev melee combat was very secondary to the gun dialogue.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged the military industry to multiply its production and even skip commercial protocols for the sake of urgency. The ratio of fire on the battlefield is four to one in favor of Moscow, which is partly explained by the possession of a huge basic arsenal inherited from the Soviet era and whose ammunition is also cheaper than the advanced projectiles it is fired with. supplied by the West. An Excalibur rocket, which can cover great distances thanks to autonomous propulsion, costs 109,000 euros. On the other hand, a 155 millimeter howitzer, traditional, technologically poor and of which Russia kept an estimated reserve, can be obtained for less than a thousand.
The Russian arsenal is on the far side of the moon. Nobody knows for sure. Some experts estimate it has twenty million large-caliber projectiles and would have used a third. The problem is not so much real depletion, but virtual, which carries a similar risk: reaching the zero point, inability to replenish with the necessary speed. A deficit caused in part by international sanctions that have robbed it of certain basic components. “It is unlikely that the Russian defense industry will be able to produce advanced munitions at the rate at which it uses them,” the British Ministry of Defense noted in its daily reports recently.
Israeli President Isaak Herzog brought to the White House on Wednesday evidence that US President Joe Biden has been broadcasting for days about Iran’s cooperation in arming the Russian military. The Kremlin has delved into this market, as well as North Korea, presumably for specific gadgets like kamikaze drones, as it falls short of more sophisticated assassins. Highly accurate missiles are scarce. Of the Iskander, which has been feared by NATO for decades, they are said to have about 30% reserves left. The situation is so absurd that the occupiers have had to fire at Ukrainian positions with 1960s heavy anti-ship missiles and other anti-aircraft missiles, inaccurately and with a high degree of error.
However, Moscow does not lose its poisonous humor. Senior defense officials boasted on Thursday that NATO and Spain are “the bottom of the barrel” to provide military support to Ukraine after announcing the shipment of MIM-23 HAWK missiles, a 1960s missile invented by the United States, which they were never used in combat and that the Pentagon removed them from its catalog in 2002. Yet quite a few armies still have them in their bases. The Spanish offer will consist of 36 launchers purchased in 1965 and in the 1990s, in this case second-hand.
After mobilizing some $18,000 million and waiting for Congress to approve another $55,000 million astronomical item, the White House has been straining its military to the max. The same is happening with NATO, the capacity to deliver weapons to Kiev is not infinite and the problem is no longer just to collect platforms and ammunition to deliver them to its troops, but to prevent the US’s own arsenals from being destroyed. be emptied. British or German, to name three examples, and to the extreme. The battle of angry giants that bathes so many Ukrainian children in blood is also a black hole for Western armies.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies warns that there is essential high-tech military equipment in the US that “reaches the minimum level necessary for war and training plans”. And they add that it will take years to restore pre-war stockpiles to all NATO partners. There are hardly any Stinger missiles left to export to the front lines. And the Ukrainian war hammer, the popular Javelin, is on the same path. The US has shipped over 9,000 units but can only make a thousand a year.
Washington is “learning lessons” from the Ukrainian conflict. The main one, the need to have strong arsenals. After independence, Ukrainian military officials sold much of the ex-Soviet stock to African armies and security forces and now rely solely on foreign production.
For the Allies, and especially the US, it’s a matter of clockwork. The military industry was phased out after the Cold War, and in the last two decades it had to adjust to a slower pace of work to extend orders and avoid shutting down production lines. Parts are missing. There are systems that need strong reinvestment to keep from becoming obsolete and others that were closed due to lack of demand need to be reopened, as is the case with the Javelin, whose factories stopped producing them when the US had already filled their warehouses. .
Source: La Verdad
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
